Raymond John Belsey (27) was jailed for three years, four months in February after a jury before the Dunedin District Court found him guilty of unlawful sexual connection.
He was also convicted of wilful damage, for smashing a wooden panel in the building’s historic High Court room in an angry outburst during the trial.
Belsey’s arguments regarding the alleged inadmissibility of evidence and the judge’s directions to the jury were rejected by the Court of Appeal in a judgement released this week.
Belsey and the victim were sharing a cell at the Otago Corrections Facility in July 2020.
Tensions boiled over when the defendant made sexualised comments about a 10-year-old girl who featured in a television advertisement, the court heard at trial.
When the victim objected to the crass description, Belsey threw the remote at the television, jumped from his top bunk and smashed the device.
He then turned his attention to the man in the bottom bunk, who was lying on his front in his underwear, and violated him.
Belsey was interviewed by police two months later during which he claimed he and the victim got on "very well".
He said there had been an argument and some damage to property but denied any aggressive sex acts.
Justice Timothy Brewer accepted the constable who conducted the interview should not have read his written notes to the jury but he concluded it did not amount to a miscarriage of justice.
Belsey’s police interview ended early because he tried to smash a glass panel separating him from the officer.
Counsel Josh Lucas said airing that "created a real risk that the jury may find that [Belsey] was an angry, aggressive person with prurient and persistent pedophiliac views or beliefs".
That evidence was relevant to the jury, the Court of Appeal ruled, because it demonstrated why the defendant’s statement had not been signed.
There were criticisms of the trial judge’s summing up, particularly that more emphasis should have been placed on the victim’s "motive to lie".
However, the court was not swayed.
The victim, who was handcuffed to Corrections officers while undergoing an intrusive medical examination, later received an apology from the prison manager for his treatment.
The episode prompted a review which now dictated a Corrections nurse would accompany any inmate during such an assessment, while officers remained outside the room.
